Saturday, May 07, 2011

UFO Crashes and Len Stringfield

Not all that long ago, I found a report on the MUFON Symposium held in Denver, Colorado in 2010. The author reported on my presentation which was a tribute to Len Stringfield (seen here) and the pioneering work he had done on UFO crash/retrieval cases.

I pointed out that Len had opened the door for the rest of us, and a subset of the UFO field, that is crash/retrievals, was now something that was viewed with new interest and new respect. If not for Len’s work, we wouldn’t be looking at these cases simply because we had been "educated" by the destruction of the Aztec UFO Crash case and the information about the reliability of the two men who were at the heart of it.

In his landmark paper, Len began with what seemed, in 1978, to be a strong report given the source of the information. I confess that the fact the witness claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel colored my thinking about it. In fact, in A History of UFO Crashes, I gave the case high marks. Later, in Crash - When UFOs Fall from the Sky, I would reevaluate the case. I thought of it as taking it to the end, which, I believe Len would have wanted.

In his 1978 presentation in Ohio at the MUFON Symposium, Len reported:

In 1948, according to reports from hazy sources, a UFO with occupants numbering anywhere from one to sixteen, had crashed in a desert region of the southwest United States or Mexico and was retrieved by U.S. military authorities. But the reports never got beyond rumor because 1948 was the year when Frank Scully’s book unloaded an alleged hoax on the public about a crashed UFO in Aztec, New Mexico.

In the Fall of 1977 new word of a 1948 crash came to me from a well-informed military source. His information, however, was scanty. He had heard from other "inside" military sources that a metallic disc had crashed somewhere in a desert region. His only details indicated that the craft had suffered severe damage on impact and was retrieved by military units.

By coincidence, months later in 1977, I was to learn more about a crashed disc occurring in 1948. This came from researcher Todd Zechel, whom I had known since 1975 when he became Research Director of Ground Saucer Watch. Formerly with the National Security Agency, Zechel stated that an Air Force technician told him that his uncle, then a Provost Marshal at Carswell Air Force Base near Ft. Worth, Texas, had taken part in the recovery of the crashed UFO which was described as a metallic disc, 90 feet in diameter.

The crash occurred about 30 miles inside the Mexican border across from Laredo, Texas, and was recovered by U.S. troops after it was tracked on radar screens. The job assigned the Provost Marshal, now a retired colonel, was to cordon off the crash site.

The retired colonel [Provost Marshal], now living in Florida, was tracked down by Zechel. Among other facts revealed by the colonel was that one dead alien was found aboard the craft which was described as about 4 feet, 6 inches tall, completely hairless with hands that had no thumbs.

Zechel learned from his source that the troops involved in the retrieval were warned that if they said a word about the incident they would be the "sorriest people around".

Continuing his investigation, Zechel pieced together other eyewitnesses to the 1948 event. In his statement, Zechel relates the following: "I traced another Air Force colonel, now retired in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He had seen the UFO in flight. He was flying an F-94 fighter out of Dias [in reality Dyess] Air Force Base in Texas and was over Albuquerque, New Mexico, when reports came of a UFO on the West Coast, flying over Washington State. Radars clocked its speed at 2,000 miles per hour.

It made a 90 – degree turn and flew east, over Texas. The colonel, then a captain pilot, actually saw it as it passed. Then suddenly it disappeared from radar screens. At Dias base, the radar operators plotted its course, and decided it had crashed some 30 miles across the Mexican border from Laredo. When the captain got back to base, he and a fellow pilot got into a small plane and took off over the border after the UFO. When they landed in the desert at the crash site, U.S. troops were there before them.

The craft was covered with a canopy, and the two pilots were not allowed to see it. They were then called to Washington, D.C. for debriefing and sworn to secrecy about the whole event.

Those are the basics of the case, and I selected this one, I say, not only because it was the first in his original paper, but because he had more to say about it later. And, I have found a great deal of information about the case in the last year or so. Some of you might have recognized the details as presented here, but are puzzled by the date.

In his The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome published in January 1980, Len reported that a fellow named James Minton had told him about another fellow, named William Draeger who talked about a UFO crash in 1950.

Len wrote, "I knew the incident well, and that it had been disputed by some researchers, however, I had not pursued the case beyond having referred to the alleged crash in my pervious paper. At that time, I had used information related by Todd Zechel to the Midnight Globe (not exactly the most reliable of sources). Since, further research into the case by Zechel and others has revealed that not only the year of the incident was wrong, having changed from 1948 to 1950, but also the crash site was changed."

He printed a letter from Draeger who said that he had learned more about the crash, including information from an unnamed high-ranking Mexican Army officer. Draeger said he talked to the general on the telephone who told him that he knew about the crash but he had no papers or documents to prove it. Draeger asked if the general would go on camera for an interview and the officer agreed. When they arrived at his home, however, the general denied any knowledge of the incident. On camera, the general said he knew nothing about the crash.

Since that time, I have learned that Zechel never bothered to "vet" the retired colonel he had found in Pennsylvania. Everyone, including Len, believed that Zechel had done that. When I attempted to verify the "colonel’s" credentials, all I could learn was that he had been a low ranking enlisted soldier who entered the service in December 1945 and was released from active duty in January 1947.

I have learned that the this colonel, the Pennsylvania man, was an officer in the Civil Air Patrol who has now changed the date of the crash to 1954, or 1955, or maybe 1957. He wasn’t flying F-94s out of Dyess because the F-94 didn’t exist as an operational fighter in 1948 and Dyess didn’t exist in 1948. He has made many changes to the original story as some of his "facts" were found to be inaccurate.

And, I found, in the forerunner to the MUFON UFO Journal, Skylook, an article from 1968 that gives us the original information that set Zechel on his quest, and which, I believe, would have tipped off Len to the believability of the sighting if he had known about it. According to that article:

Col. R. B. Willingham, CAP squadron commander, has had an avid interest in UFO’s for years, dating back to 1948 when he was leading a squadron of F-94 jets near the Mexican border in Texas and was advised by radio that three UFO’s "flying formation" were near. He picked them up on his plane radar and was informed one of the UFO’s had crashed a few miles away from him in Mexico. He went to the scene of the crash but was prevented by the Mexican authorities from making an investigation or coming any closer than 60 feet. From that vantage point the wreckage seemed to consist of "numerous pieces of metal polished on the outside, very rough on the inner sides."

Len’s research here, then, provided some of the basics of the case and opened it up to the research of many others. When Len first reported the case in 1978, it seemed to be a very good one, especially because of the high rank claimed by the witness. Later, as I became interested in UFO crash/retrieval stories, I accepted it as well because an Air Force colonel had signed an affidavit about it. High-ranking military officers simply wouldn’t jeopardize their reputations by telling a story that was so incredible unless it was true. I knew of many witnesses who claimed high military rank who had not attained it but just claimed it, but I was also convinced that a real officer who had worked all his career to get to this high rank would not make up such a story. I believed then, as Len did, there was some truth to this. But it all hinged on that Air Force colonel. Without him, the tale took a nose dive.

As I have reported in the past, the man was not an Air Force officer, but a CAP officer. The difference is that CAP officers are volunteers in a civilian auxiliary of Air Force, but they are not Air Force officers. Those who have served in the Air Force or the CAP know the difference. This guy, Robert Willingham tried to blur the difference to make him into something that he wasn’t.

So now I have taken one of Len’s first reports, actually Abstract I from his 1978 MUFON presentation and followed the investigation to the end. We now have what I believe to be a solid answer for this case which is, simply, it didn’t happen. Len started this process by publishing his information about it and I ended it for him. I believe Len would appreciate what we all have learned about this case. He would appreciate that we could now close it.

But this was not a criticism of Len or his work. He used, in 1978, the best information available to him. In 1980, he added to our knowledge by reporting on the changes to the case which made him suspicious. It wasn’t until 2008, as I was preparing my book on UFO crashes, that I found, originally through the Internet, more data, and that I discovered no one had bothered to learn if Willingham was telling the truth about his military career. Len thought others had done it and I thought others had done it. It wasn’t until I asked those others what they knew that I learned that truth.

This case unraveled because of Len’s work. He raised the original suspicions about it. He was the one who supplied the information about the shifting date, and without Len, we would never have learned what we did.

In that article I saw, it seemed to suggest that I was criticizing Len, but such was not the case. He was a valuable member of the UFO research community, and would have published the latest and best information the moment he had it. Len’s work and legacy can’t be ignored. He was a true pioneer, a true researcher, and the UFO community is much poorer with him gone.

31 comments:

I spoke to Len Stringfield on a few occasions (we both lived in the Cincinnati area). I remember that he told me that the famous Battle of Los Angeles photo was probably the best photographic evidence for UFO's.

Len didn't live long enough to find out that the photo was a retouched concoction that actually didn't show much of anything other than paint and imagination.

To my mind, this is a perfect representation of the UFO myth in general.

starman said: "How could anyone with a modicum of knowledge in this field say the LA battle pic is better than say, McMinnville?"

With all due respect, I have an answer for that one: No UFO pic is worth its salt if there is no corraborative eyewitness information associated with it. Especially in this day, and age of digital manipulation. The Feb 1942 pic is accompanied by many eyewitnesses, and their decriptions, including the most important, in my nopinion, that it rambled off down the coast, AFTER the thousands of rounds were emptied on to this "balloon". It is why it shouldn't be examined as simply a picture. This pic has accumulated some degree of authority via this combination of eyewitness testimonies and the pic itself.

Ditto to Lance. I don't know where you got the information that it is some retouched job.

As you see all the ridiculous "photo analysis" such as that done by the shameless hack, Maccabee was done on a painted negative.

Never fear--now that the new original photo is out (and looks very different from the published one) Maccabee has hidden his embarrassing earlier effort on the fake photo and, naturally, STILL sees a saucer in there on the new one.

Like most saucer believers, he starts with the conclusion and then works backwards.

Lance, thank you for the correction. I was obviously unaware of the finding.

The photograph is not THAT much different, as you say that it is. The object, whatever it was, is still there. There are too many searchlights converging on it causing it to be hazed out a little, yes. And the sightings of high flying planes was reported all along, and investigated. It was hard to believe ANY high flying "enemy" airplanes were seen, as they would have had to come from someplace, and go to someplace.

At any rate, the many witnesses who reported on this to investigators over the years do not make it a laughable incident, as you make it out to be, simply because the original was retouched somewhat.

You forgive Maccabee and other too much--the imagined saucer shape that they all raved about HAS disappeared in the real photo.

Tim Printy (in SUNlite--I believe in the 1st issue of this year) did an excellent piece showing that what you call an object is just what happens when the beams of searchlights converge. He has archive photos unrelated TO the BOLA that show the same round (naturally!) shape!

This won't stop UFO zealots from seeing saucers in the clouds, of course.

Notwithstanding the always interesting discussions of ancient UFO cases, which is why visitations to this blog are mandatory for enthusiasts, the reality is that in the modern era there are a large number of UFO photographs available for perusal. I have taken a quite clear one myself, so I know it isn't a fake and the UFO phenomenon is not a myth. But as Mr. Koford correctly states, a photo isn't worth the paper it is printed on without corroborative eyewitnesses.

Unfortunately, investigations of the provenance of photographs and video now rarely take place in the internet era, except perhaps in South America. Perhaps its like other values in modern society, never mind the quality just feel the width its amazing. Is the mumbo jumbo that the UFOs hide behind increasing, or is it just taking on a different manifestation?

My post had nothing to do with the BOLA picture and I have no knowledge that Len thought it was anything other than a strange picture.

Len told me, about his status reports, that he published all the information he had about a case. Hence, when he learned of the solution to the Del Rio hoax, he published the information... which puts him way ahead of many others, including skeptics and debunkers.

He was a gentleman of the old school and someone whose example... meaning his courtesy to others, is one that we all should follow.

While you are certainly entitled to your own opinion, and I have always entertained the opinions of everyone here, it is unnecessary to resort to name calling. You might not like Dr. Maccabee's opinions, and I certainly disagree with him on many occasions, you can do so without the snide comments. I am tempted to remove your remark about Dr. Maccabee.

Again, all opinions are welcome here, except those that attack people because you don't like their opinions or conclusions. The exception I make is for those who lie about their military backgrounds because they believe it adds credibility to what they say.

The "colonel" who invented the story, in 1968, is Robert Willingham. I have been unable to find any evidence that he was an Air Force officer or fighter pilot. He is one of the exceptions to my rule...

The other colonel who Zechel was chasing was the provost marshal at Ft. Worth. I do not know why Zechel thought he knew anything of importance, unless it was something that Willingham said. This other colonel took out a restraining order against Zechel to make Zechel stop harrassing him.

The point is that I have traced the Del Rio crash to its original source, Skylook, and Willingham, and found that the information does not match that given by Willingham later, first to Zechel and then to Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte.

Bob Koford wrote:First the October 12, 1947 incident in the Sign files, then wilkie Conner, then Wyandotte, then Scully, then a number of other references over the years by different people.

For those of you who haven't had a look at Bob Koford's interesting and well-researched blog with his work in digging up he Oct. 1947 Mexico incident documents, see:

http://bobkoford.blogspot.com

So some sort of flaming object seems to have definitely crashed in northern Mexico at that time. My first guess would be a meteor, but what I find interesting is how seriously the U.S. military took the incident, i.e., as possibly the crash of some sort of aircraft, God knows what, since it wasn't one of ours.

This is true of other crashed or possibly crashed fireball incidents of this period where U.S. military intelligence and counterintelligence were deeply involved in the investigations, including those of meteor chaser Dr. Lincoln LaPaz of the Univ. of N.M., who was working for them.

What does the military or intelligence agencies care about the recovery of "meteors"? Nada, that's what. True crashed technological aircraft is what they care about.

As Gen. Nathan Twining wrote when he issued Air Force Regulation 200-2 in 1953, true UFOs (those that REMAINED unidentified even after thorough investigation by their experts) were to be investigated because of their national security and technical aspects.

I doubt Twining was concerned the national security or technical aspects of meteors.

As for the comments about the 1942 "Battle of LA" photo from the LA Times, the truly puzzling aspect of the photo, as Bruce Maccabee has noted, is that that searchlights don't penetrate or barely penetrate beyond the convergence area, strongly indicating something dense enough to stop the beams. Smoke alone won't do that, nor would the region of illumination be confined in a small area. The entire smoke cloud would be illuminated.

This is true BOTH of the SLIGHTLY retouched photo that appeared in the newspaper back then, and the original photo that has recently been shown on the Net. See some comparison photos of newspaper vs. unretouched photo vs. very recent SyFy "Fact or Faked" show where they attempted to recreate the scene:

Look at the un-retouched photo at the bottom. See, searchlights are blocked by something and no big, diffusely illuminated smoke cloud in sight.

The SyFy "Fact or Fiction" show, where they attempted to recreate the photo by various means, such as pure searchlights, searchlights with smoke, searchlights with smoke and weather balloon, etc., was on YouTube, but was recently taken down for copyright infringement. But suffice to say, nothing they did could adequately reproduce what is seen in the photo, including the unretouched one. The weather balloon got somewhat close, but no balloon could survive a 1400 round artillery barrage of the real event.

Tim Printy's SUNlite Vol3_1 page 21 clearly shows 2 photos (unrelated to the BOLA) of searchlights against the sky. In both, the beams end as they hit clouds or smoke. The argument that that Mr. Rudiak makes above therefore is shown to be lacking.

Printy’s sunlite:http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite3_1.pdf

Printy shows the reader this photo, from a 1939 LIFE magazine shoot in Panama, showing searchlight beams being stopped, probably by a cloud, also visible in the photo:

http://tinyurl.com/6a7qpqm

But he doesn’t show this photo, from the same Panama photo-shoot, showing the searchlights passing right through one another and obviously not blocked.

http://tinyurl.com/6afnzzx

You can also easily search for more LIFE searchlight photos, which include this interesting one showing a German blimp caught in an array of searchlights, with again many searchlights obviously not stopped where they intersect in the sky, nor, surprisingly, do many appear to be totally stopped by the blimp itself, probably skirting around the edges. Also note the similar degree of what appears to be AA bursts in the sky around the blimp, like in the LA Times photo:

http://tinyurl.com/6b8tvs9

Printy also shows you a different photo of the LA event that appeared in LIFE and notes it is a time lapse, shows stars, and shows beam penetration beyond the convergence areas (3 or 4 fuzzy ones here instead of the one discrete zone of the LA Times photo, therefore obviously taken at a different location and time).

Page 22:http://tinyurl.com/3ene39o

Because the two LA photos were taken at different times and locations, we are comparing apples and oranges.

Also, the skies were probably clear (hence stars), at least where the LIFE photo was taken, but accounts I’ve read elsewhere indicate skies were clear everywhere that night. Thus clouds are unlikely to account for the stoppage of the beams in the LA Times photo, and indeed none can be seen, as in the Panama photo of stopped searchlight beams that Printy bogusly uses for comparison. It’s again comparing apples and oranges.

Printy instead assumes that smoke from AA fire stopped the beams dead in their tracks, while also claiming the Times exaggerated the AA fire to make the photo more "exciting". This would require a very dense smoke cloud, should have formed a larger diffuse cloud that would have been lit up as well by the searchlights, instead of the light forming a very discrete area of illumination. In fact, this is exactly what the SyFy “Fact or Fiction” group got when they experimented with a smoke cloud. They got some minor stoppage of the searchlights plus a diffusely illuminated cloud around where the beams converged. And curiously, the searchlight photo above of the German blimp, with all the AA fire around it, shows minimal beam stoppage, though one would presume a similar degree of smoke in the air.

Nevertheless, Printy also argues the smoke plus absence of time lapse in the LA Times photos accounts for the absence of visible beams beyond the convergence zone. But even this isn’t enough as Printy uses his usual throwing in everything-but- the-kitchen-sink style of argumentation. So we get an additional contradictory handwaving argument, without any supporting evidence, that maybe, because it wasn’t time lapse, the LA Times overexposed the photo during film development (nothing to do with print retouching afterward) to bring out the searchlight beams and convergence point, but doesn’t ask the obvious question why this also didn’t bring out what should have been penetration of the beams beyond the convergence area.

So much for Printy’s article, which is full of holes, often contradicts itself, and doesn’t really explain anything.

To be clear, I am not arguing there was an actual alien UFO up there. I can't understand why they would just sit there and take a shellacking from 1400 exploding artillery shells. Either they have damn fine deflector shields or their superhard, superstrong Roswell metals are a lot tougher than we thought.

I could easily accept the Army was on edge and overreacted, then covered it up from embarrassment and to avoid deflating already-shaky public morale that we were being defended by incompetents.

The problem is there is conflicting evidence, such as the one hour of radar tracking of something out at sea approaching the LA area before the barrage began. As for a "weather balloon" supposedly triggering the firing, where is it? It would immediately have been punctured and the remains and its payload fallen rapidly to the ground. Yet nothing was reported found.

Sec. of War Henry Stimson and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall the next day swore the troops were shooting at something quite real (real unidentified aircraft) and hadn't overreacted. Truman considered Marshall in particular the most competent and honorable person he had ever met, so instead I would have expected a statement like, "We really screwed up, but I'll personally make sure it never happens again!"

And finally, there is that LA Times photo, the original negative, not the touched up print they published, not that it makes any difference. BOTH show most of the searchlight beams converging and illuminating one small area, but with little or no penetration beyond that area. As Maccabee notes, the area seems to be very optically dense, yet the sky was probably clear (e.g., weather records and LIFE photo showing stars), smoke would allow some penetration, quickly disperse, be irregular, and would be diffusely illuminated. We don't see that in the Times photo.

The newspapers back then printed skepticism and confusion about often conflicting official explanations, including the Times in a front-page, acid editorial. Even the military analysts back then couldn't agree on exactly what happened when they reviewed all the evidence. I would think, e.g., some document somewhere would have emerged eventually from higher up, such as the papers of Marshall of Stimson, where they internally admit error on the part of the Army. No need to keep this classified after 70 years. WWII ended long ago.

So an enigma. I'm a fence sitter, not knowing whether this is one of the best-documented mass UFO sightings of all time or a colossal military SNAFU and cover-up.

Looking at the one photo on the page I cited in Tim Printy's article cited from Allan Hendry’s “UFO investigator’s handbook”, I can't even see any clouds but I do see the beam stopping dead and creating the white shape similar to the BOLA photo. I have to admit that the resolution of the photo is quite low.

Does anyone know of a more high rez version of that image online somewhere?

Kevin said: "This other colonel took out a restraining order against Zechel to make Zechel stop harrassing him."

Thats the kind of info Im talking about. Vetting the meat of this would be important, if there was any chance the original Provost Marshall was telling the truth?...or Mr. Zechel was telling the truth about his original data?

Mr. Stringfield told me this in a telephone conversation sometime in the early or mid 1990's. I am quite certain that I asked him the question as to what he thought was the best UFO photo or something like that and he simply answered off the top of his head. To be fair, he may have considered a different answer in other circumstances.

I remember that he was frustrated that I wouldn't agree with him as to the importance of certain evidence (most of which consisted of anonymous anecdotes, upon which he placed great weight).

This was somewhat before I became a hard core skeptic but I was well on that path.

Len published all the information he had on a case, his thinking being that it might provide the solution that someone else wanted. He often commented about the reliability of the information but didn't suppress it. As I tried to point out, with the Del Rio case, which he "reopened" with his 1978 paper, he then printed the problems with it in one of his status reports, telling us that it was not reliable. I applaud Len for his willingness to share all the information.

Lance - I never heard Len talk about the BOLA picture or that he thought it among the best. He seemed more interested in McMinnville.

Bob -

Willingham said that the original retrieval operation came out of Fort Worth, which was renamed Carswell. When the date of the crash was changed, Zechel assumed that the provost marshal there would have been involved... Willingham has changed the base used for the retrieval a couple of times, settling on Dyess (which he can't even spell.) There is absolutely no reason to chase the former provost marshal at Carswell because there was no Del Rio crash. Willingham made it up.

I'm new to reading blogs and I am finding the experience useful. The discussions on mailing lists tend to drift and get into pointless ad hominem attacks.

My interest started in 1966 at age 17 after reading the marsh gas stories of Dr Hynek. I read the books of Charles Fort at that time.

Over the past two years I have been going through the Project Blue Book (PBB) image files at footnote dot com. I have completed years 1948 to 1956. At times the USAF comments on NICAP and others who in their eyes contribute to the hysteria and disinformation re UFO reports. I am amazed at the number of air/ground/ship radar reports and especially those handful that were visual as well.

Has anyone made an intense study of these PBB files? There is quite a bit of information that seems to have not made it into the general literature.